Social Media Has Peaked. Here's What Comes Next.

Read this on victoriaprew.com​

Read time: 1.5 minutes

Hey!

I listened to a podcast episode last week that really made me stop and think. The headline: social media has peaked. Not is peaking. Peaked. Back in 2022, and it has been going down ever since. It goes into how 2026 is going to be the year of the Offline Renaissance, and I completely agree.

TODAY AT A GLANCE

• Time spent on social media peaked in 2022 and has fallen almost 10% since.
• The steepest decline is amongst teenagers and twenty-somethings.
• People have not stopped wanting connection. They have stopped finding it in a feed.

[the data]

The chart that stopped me

Time on social platforms peaked in 2022. By the end of 2024, adults across the developed world were down to two hours and twenty minutes a day. That is almost 10% below the peak:

Last week, I posted a reel in a similar vein, how much propaganda did it take to persuade us that sitting on our phones, overconsumption and climate change are "normal"? I really believe the tides are rapidly turning.

[the opportunities]

36 Biggest Startup Opportunities

Greg Isenberg put out the 36 biggest startup opportunities right now. Worth reading in full.

Four things I would happily put my own money behind:

1. Elder tech. The most underbuilt consumer category I have looked at in years. Founders build for people who look like them, and almost nobody building right now is 70. There is a generation with time, money and no products made for them.
2. Solving loneliness. Third spaces. Membership. Clubs. Structured ways to be around other people that are not a pub and not an app. Venture keeps trying to solve this with software. It is not a software problem.
3. Small social. The nine people you actually speak to, given proper software for the first time since WhatsApp. No ranking. No strangers. No slop. Group chats as products.
4. Adult learning for joy. Pottery. Woodwork. Drawing. Ceramics. Adults paying to be beginners at something, in a room, with their hands, with no outcome attached. The classes near me are full and there is a waiting list.

[where I landed]

I'm not calling the end of social media. What this research has changed is this question, when thinking about building a new business:

Does this business get better or worse if people spend an hour less a day on their phone?

We might have reached "Peak Social" but people still want connection. They just don't want it in the form of a social media feed. This is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs.

For me personally:

• Instagram before bed, now a book
• Deliveroo, now cooking properly twice a week
• Podcasts at 2x speed on a walk, now walking with nothing in my ears
• News on my phone at 7am, now the paper

Almost everyone I know can list their own.

Think about what you have stopped doing online this year and what you replaced it with. Write the replacement down. Is that your next business opportunity?

Have a good week,
Victoria